"There is nothing new under the sun"

I know, I'm sure there are many older lolcats, too! But maybe not on photographic paper.

I really love little things like this. So often I find my generation think that we're the first to do this, or the first to feel like that, and so on. And sure - I'm young enough that I have never lived without a computer in my home, or a CD player, and have seen all of these other amazing technological advances that have come during my life time.

So I really appreciate it when something like this comes my way, that allows me to suddenly put myself back in my place and think "You know what? My generation is not as unique as it thinks it is".

I think this is also why I love reading classic literature too - for all the dated language and customs, occasionally someone will say something and it will kind of stop me in my tracks, because what they've said is as true today as it ever was.

There's something comforting about that.

Then again, sometimes it makes me feel a little fatalistic also.

Yeah, I think we tend to make too much of technology as change. Technology provides us new media, but we essentially use the new media to do and say the same things we've always done, as humans. Our use of different media does change the way we learn and interact and do things somewhat, but not our brains or our humanness. We still want to talk to each other about the same stuff - sex, business, jokes, religion, politics, where to find the best berries/wildebeest/cinnamon/absinthe/flatscreen, whatever. We're a predictable species.

We still want to talk to each other about the same stuff - sex, business, jokes, religion, politics, where to find the best berries/wildebeest/cinnamon/absinthe/flatscreen, whatever.

This much is true, but there is undeniable change. I remember sitting on my porch listening to some blues song from the 1930's and thinking 'This guy probably got paid $50 and a bottle of whiskey to record this on some big piece of wax. And here I am listening to it, having plucked it from the air for free, playing it on a device the size of a pack of smokes, that holds 15,000 other tunes, too. What would he say?' That's kind of mind-bogging.

What would he say in 1930 when some swell in New York City sat on his fat ass listening to it on the radio or on a 78? It was no more or less marvelous then.

Technology changes. People, not so much.

"What would he say?" I think he would say "wow that's cool". I really don't think technological advances would really shock people from the past all that much.

Wow, our lolcats used to be so well-spoken! What the heck happened to your grammar skills, kittehs?!

Iz teh edukashun sistem. Itz not so gud.

Yes!

I was telling this random person I met at a bar the other day, somehow without managing to bore her to tears, that I was reading the online edition of the New Yorker from 1925, and I was surprised at just how modern those guys were? The same sniping at celebrities, the same irony--we think we're so modern and hip and everything but probably even back to Roman times people have always been "hip". (If you think about it, capital-I-Irony is most closely associated with the ancient Greeks.)

So a couple years ago I was reading Ted Kennedy's "Dream Shall Never Die" speech? And it struck me just how closely it mirrored the arguments we were having in 2004. Then we were reading the British socialist party manifesto from the late 1800s and it's the same deal! Welfare vs. laissez-faire etc. Even the Communist manifesto talks about things like extra marital sex that are still every bit as fresh when we talk about them today. And if you think about it, Locke and Rousseau and Burke were on about the same things--once you get beyond the idea of establishing a representative republic, what's there to talk about? Macroeconomic policy!

jonathanstrange, I agree with you that it's simultaneously heartening and depressing. It's heartening because it's good to know that we come out of a tradition and it's okay if we don't win all our battles within our lifetimes--we're not the first people to come up with our ideas. It's disheartening because it just shows that "progress" is a bit of a chimera.

I keep reading that "?" as a "Z", so it says "WHAT'S DELAYING MY DINNERZ"

I love this so much. Do you guys think it's 'shopped? To my eye, only the caption might be. . .

No, I don't think it's photoshopped at all. I've seen enough Victoriana to feel no reason to doubt it. In fact, I've seen a ton of this stuff in illustrated form - Google Victorian children's books sometime - but not in a photo before, though there's a good 40 years of photo history before the date of this pic.

Also, tonight we went to an open studios at this place with dozens of artists' studios and businesses, and one was an old books dealer. I found a book from the 50s called "The World of Kittens". It was just pages of photos of kittens, black and white, with silly captions. It was lolcats.

Firas, that's the best part about studying history. The more you read from various points in history, the more you realize how consistent human culture is. Every age thinks it's special, yet there really is very little that's new in any way excepting particular details, and maybe processing speed or ease of access - differences of degree, but not of kind.